Hartmann Report

Now that rightwing media has arguably caused more Americans to die than has tobacco, it’s time to consider a strategy like we used with cigarettes to balance their deadly lies and misinformation. It happened three times yesterday, and I only watched or half-watched a few hours of TV news. It happens every day, it seems. Somebody wonders out loud (yesterday’s most prominent was Alex Witt with Dr. Anthony Fauci) why over 60 million Americans who’re eligible to be vaccinated are still refusing — including hospital workers in some parts of the country. Everybody treats it like it’s a confounding question with no easy answer. The actual answer, though, is pretty straightforward: the psychopaths running the rightwing media ecosystem dominated by Fox “News” and social media, and echoed by 1500 radio stations across the country, have decided people dying and being disabled is both profitable and politically advantageous to them.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The media is largely ignoring or poo-poohing Trump’s claim Wednesday that Republicans won’t show up to vote in 2022 and 2024 unless the party orients itself totally around “election integrity.” But, as I noted in yesterday’s Daily Rant, that phrase (among others) is his code for rigging elections so he can regain power in 2024.

What they’ve created has taken on a life of its own & is now tearing America apart - Steve Bannon, echoing Hitler, predicted, “We’re putting together a coalition that’s gonna govern for 100 years” Trump’s agenda is to destroy democracy in America, and the GOP and their billionaire donors are going along with it while much of the media are treating it like politics as usual. It’s a two-part plan that involves both corrupting our election processes and fomenting a violent “rebellion” by white supremacists to shatter our society. Part one is to end free and fair elections in America.

We’re seeing tent cities & massive homelessness in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires want to make a killing: Will America remove housing from their clutches? It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of homelessness. Rarely, though, do you hear that Wall Street is helping cause it. Thirty-two percent seems to be the magic threshold, according to new research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires want to make a killing.

Somebody needs to tell the politicians: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” On March 13, 1962 President Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Today we have armed militias in our streets; violence in our state capitols, school boards, and on airplanes; and just ten months ago we saw an actual attempt at violent revolution in our US Capitol. What happened to the “peaceful revolution”? A quick glance at the past 40 years of American history answers the question while giving us a modern insight into Kennedy’s prescient warning.

We are close to either a collapse or a renewal of democracy: which way will America go? While there’s apparently “nothing to see here” when it comes to conservative media outlets and even, in many ways, mainstream media, it’s worth asking the question: “How far down the road toward authoritarian oligarchy, or even outright fascism, have we gone?” The answer to that question informs our understanding of how close in time we may be to some sort of “final” crisis, and to how easy or difficult it will be to pull back and preserve a functioning democratic republic.

Justice Stevens and his fellow “liberals” on the Court warned us Citizens United could doom our republic, something that’s now within our sight. When Bobby Kennedy went after organized crime in the early 1960s, one of the things he learned was that the Mafia had a series of rituals new members went through to declare their loyalty and promise they’d never turn away from their new benefactors. Once in, they’d be showered with money and protection, but they could never leave and even faced serious problems if they betrayed the syndicate. Which brings us to the story of Kyrsten Sinema.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — 2020 Election: How close was America to having Trump declare himself president-for-life? — Trump’s people are trying to run out the clock or outright defy the January 6th Select Committee — The Founders and Framers put the Emoluments Clause into the Constitution to prevent a president would was in financial trouble or beholden to a particular patron or interest from holding office — What the hell is Joe Manchin talking about when he says, “I cannot accept our economy, or basically our society, moving towards an entitlement mentality”? — It's the Algorithm, Stupid! — Morbidly rich people around the world are hiding hundreds of billions of dollars in South Dakota — Crazy Alert! New Orleans Republicans dump their leader for praising slavery and she’s spittin’ mad — In Good News: A historic vote for a clean environment — As 1 in 500 children in America have lost a caregiver to Covid, an Oregon group is now calling out corrupt Republican politicians for spreading lies about vaccines, masks and the disease.

Big Pharma’s obscenely-priced drugs developed w/tax dollars will continue to drain working people of income, savings, and – ultimately – their health until America recognizes healthcare as a right. Molnupiravir is the new pill that’s been all over the news recently because it can cut hospitalizations and deaths of unvaccinated Covid-infected people by as much as half and doesn’t require folks to go to the hospital or an infusion center, like the monoclonal antibody remdesivir. Just take a pill every day for five days and you’re good. It was originally developed by Emory University to treat horses infected with Venezuelan equine encephalitis with a $10 million grant from the Department of Defense and $19 million from the National Institutes of Health. In other words, its invention was paid for with your tax dollars.

If an alliance of neoliberal billionaires & authoritarian Republican politicians succeed at blocking Biden’s progressive reforms or drag us into a recession - we are truly screwed. Mitch McConnell’s use of the debt ceiling, and two Democratic senators taking big bucks from billionaires and the fossil fuel industry to sabotage Democratic efforts, illustrate a major — and largely unacknowledged — crisis point in American politics.